


Smells Like Teen Spirit

by Mangerine



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Disdain of elite schools, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Teenage Rebellion, Undercover Boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24553438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangerine/pseuds/Mangerine
Summary: Their competition has credit cards with no upper limit and City Town High’s Robotics club just took apart their fifth ceiling fan for spare parts.It’s getting grim, but Zelda has her loyal team and supportive boyfriend Link behind her – or does she? Class is back in session and she’s about to learn the first rule of love and war – watch your back!
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Smells Like Teen Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cancelleria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cancelleria/gifts).



City Town High disbanded their research programme the year before. The school board cited “a lack of documented evidence of academic excellence to persuade continued funding” – which meant that their seniors should have put more effort into their social studies _along_ with engineering a solar-powered android/vending machine that tended to agriculture and food distribution.

It didn’t go over well to have the entire research team drop out without their certification. Worse was “Famine Friend” earning a multimillion-dollar patent – not a cent owed to the school board. Sure, it fed hundreds overseas, but the school board changed the passcode to their external labs the next day.

With a few dedicated Science teachers, City Town High shifted all five boxes of lab apparatus into the Robotics club’s new luxurious facility - the old school lab.

“-I know we didn’t quite find _all_ the gas leaks,” their teacher said, toasting their lab-warming, “or the permit to have any gas pipes even, but like my father always said - Mendeleev managed to survive tuberculosis and go on to create the periodic table, so anything’s possible.”

Zelda loved that teacher; too bad the school board couldn’t find her permit either.

xo

“Zelda, turn that off before the teachers hear it!”

“Oh, forget it,” Purah huffs, striding down the aisle of lab benches, silencing the phone alarm and smacking her fellow researcher’s long, golden ponytail. “I swear that alarm is for us and not you,” she says when Zelda jolts out her focus and smiles sheepishly.

“Five to six already,” Zelda sighs.

All work pauses as the lab watches their club leader photograph her progress and head to the sink with her apparatus. She turns the last beaker on its rim at the drying rack when a knock comes at the door.

“See you all Friday!” Zelda calls, snatching up her bag and running out. They wait for footsteps to trail off down the hall.

“Alright, pay up, I said four weeks.”

“Double-or-nothing for two months,”

“I’m not an idiot. No deal.”

“Here’s my game plan – 5-for-$5 at BakeTalk only starts at 1830h. Student price for shaker fries ends at 1815h, so we go for that first, then go to Korok Boba - It’s the last day but I know a guy who can save us two cups if I get him some fries – then we circle back to BakeTalk and I can walk you home by curfew. On the way home I can get dessert.”

Link keeps his eyes trained on his cracked phone screen and his fast pace to the train. Zelda doesn’t mind – she’s used to speedwalking to get home by dinner.

It’s just that dinner usually didn’t entail daily strategizing.

“Yup, still valid,” Link confirms, showing her the chatbot he consulted daily, “present coupon code VOLTFRUIT for 5% off.”

“215 unread messages,” Zelda comments instead and Link reels his phone back, “if only you checked our class chat as religiously,”

“I do,” Link lies.

“What’s due tomorrow?”

“Algebra?”

Zelda smiles and nods even though they completed that unit two weeks ago, “and who’s our Math teacher?”

“Misss…” Link says, eyeing his girlfriend’s amused smile, “-terr….?”

“Unbelievable,” Zelda says, folding her arms. Link, for his part, sheepishly turns for the elevator button and holds the doors open for her.

“I’ll call after dinner, we can finish Chemistry together,”

“Yes Ma’am,” Link replies, raising a hand in mock salute.

xo

After dinner turns out to be nearly midnight, with Zelda passing the time planning for their Environment Innovation contest entry. Hardly a passion project, but the prize money was substantial and the competition surely fierce.

Especially if Yiga Institute decided to join. The thought of competing with the notoriously snooty students was enough to fade her blonde locks white in stress. Underhanded rats too – she _knows_ their last competition entry was perfectly functional—

A knock at the door is followed immediately by the turning of a knob. Zelda stands at attention and turns to face her father.

Out of uniform and in his pyjamas, he wouldn’t look out of place with his feet up by a fireplace, snoring loud enough to creak the wooden joists of their home. Yet the sternness had yet to retire from his face, his grey brows an unwelcoming valley and his lips a frowning hill.

“Lights out,”

“Work to be done still, Father,” Zelda replies.

“Quality work still entails efficiency,” he reminds, voice gentle and words gruff. His clumsy affectation chafes at Zelda’s patience.

“Excellence demands refinement,” she rebuffs, “I always complete my work in a timely manner.”

“Lights out is at 2300h exactly,” Commander General Rhoam points out. Zelda shifts to cover the paperwork on her desk.

“So it is,” Zelda says, “Good night to you then, Father.”

He keeps his gaze for a moment more, then lowers his head, as though navel gazing. Then he straightens and closes the door behind him.

A man so repressed he held back audible sighs. Zelda wills away the smiling man in her memories who carried her high as she giggled.

It could have brought them closer, her death. Like a good daughter she threw herself into role of a child that brought no worry or fuss, chasing achievements obediently. Her father, in turn embodied the role of the steady protector, unfeeling and unfalling.

Two gears so intent on spinning right that they jammed. The clock stopped for them, and never moved from their hour of grief.

She found solace in the wilderness of research and he, reprieve in the lines of his rulebook. He’d slide scholarship brochures under her door and she’d use it to catch glue drippings while crafting a model of her inventions. He hid her materials and she botched her entry exams just bad enough to ruin her chances at a scholarship.

She put her housekeeper as her emergency contact and declines all parent-teacher meetings with forged notes the teachers barely bother to read. Classes, grades, friends…

Link.

She stands and shuffles all her paperwork onto her chair, moving to the wall furthest from her father’s bedroom and sitting on the floor. Then she calls him.

xo

“Damn, I should have taken your offer,” Purah sulks, whispering and twisting a wrench, “It’s been three months and they’re going strong.”.

“Quoth the Raven, ‘sucks to suck’,” Robbie replies in a whisper.

Zelda knocks on a table, getting the club’s attention.

“Progress update,” she announces, “I’ll make it quick,”

The room sighs and looks around for a nearby chair. Best to settle in for an hour-long speech.

“First off, thank you all for coming in right after finals, especially our first-year juniors, I know this is a huge jump in workload for you. To our seniors, thank you for going above and beyond to coach our juniors—”

Purah coughs.

“-on how to _study , _and thank you also to the juniors for selectively listening to your seniors’ advice,” Zelda shoots a pointed glare at her friend.

“To go on, we’re making good progress, no need to cancel all your weekend plans-”

“None to cancel,” Robbie shrugs.

“We know,” Purah says, and even Robbie laughs at the friendly ribbing, “but Leader Zelda does!”

Purah watches her friend roll her eyes and wait for the wolf whistling and cheering to stop. The Zelda a few years ago would have gone pale and silent in distress, maybe call in sick next session.

She should have taken that double or nothing bet on Link.

“Thank you for your support, I suppose,” Zelda sighs when the room settles, “Link will be helping us carry our build, so please don’t scare him off.”

“If you can’t scare him off there’s nothing we can do!” Purah calls. The room bursts into laughter again and Zelda shakes her head in exasperation.

Six o’ clock rolls about and the juniors are waved off as the seniors convene. Now routine involves Link joining their planning sessions, sitting aside as Zelda switches between briefing them and making sure Link is doing his homework.

To call him meek is to call sleeping lions ‘cats’ – yet for his friendliness he dutifully knocks the club door, refusing to enter until they called him in. He’s a good sport with Purah’s teasing and entertains the juniors when they bring snacks to stuff him with.

He walks too quietly. He’d drift out of sight, quietly tucking chairs in or arranging equipment at the back of the lab. Purah catches him washing apparatus in the corner, wiping and holding them to the light, eyes stern and searching.

“Ok,” Robbie nods, “two trials in school on the-”

“26th and 28th,” Zelda confirms, as Robbie jots it down. He mumbles and hops his finger across his planner.

“-and the finalized exhibition date…”

“Last day of the month, 0800h sharp,” Zelda says, “the organizers rescheduled because of the weather.”

That catches her attention. Her shocked eyes snap to Zelda.

“You can’t mean you’re coming?” Purah asks. Robbie blinks at them in confusion and she glances at him, lips tight and eyes worried.

Zelda falls silent.

“He makes me pray every year,” she replies, “it makes no sense to me. It wouldn’t make sense to her either.”

“He’ll be…” Either furious or disappointed, surely. Both used to hurt Zelda keenly.

“He’ll be alright,” Zelda replies, “he can handle himself.”

Link wipes the last beaker dry and sets it down.

xo

Curfew is 2000h now.

Zelda’s negotiations were successful, and instead of practicing her pitch with Link on the way home they find themselves talking about the wonderful and worthless – a bird Link’s neighbour found, too old to migrate; whether Zelda could take the spiciest level the local curry shop offered.

They get a small order of fries and sit in the heat of the outdoors. Zelda lays two serviettes on their tray and begins separating the crunchy fries from the soft ones. Link settles and watches her.

“It would be unkind,” Zelda says, “wouldn’t it?”

Link looks down, thinking. Zelda likes that of him, that a glib answer was rarely ready on his tongue. His clumsiness was honesty.

“What…would be kind, do you think?” Link asks.

“Going to pray,” Zelda answers simply, selecting another fry, “easing his grief.”.

Again Link looks down, hands laid on the table. His cheap digital watch catches the setting sun’s glare, glowing instead of displaying time. She had offered to replace with something less ratty, but he’d refused, saying it’d been him through much. That too, she loves of him, his impractical sentimentality.

“I don’t think that would be kind to you,” Link says finally.

There is a scoffing child still in her. She doesn’t need kindness like a dainty little princess.

She’s chased the long shadow of independence too many years - every gentle act has been an insult to her determination. Strength didn’t grow in a greenhouse and perseverance died in fishbowls – there was a painful world of identity denied to her so long.

It was no excuse to glare at Link when he held the door for her the first time they met, or to refuse his hand when she tripped during P.E. She was cold, yes – but warmth was melting; losing form.

Too afraid of change, love had to take her by surprise.

Their next class was down at the workshop with all sorts of machinery – zipping belt sanders and purring table saws. She’d been so excited the whole week – only to realize she forgot a change of long pants that day.

It was a safety requirement; no way about it. She hid in the toilet till the class left, before dourly returning to the dark, empty class. It took a measure of time before she reached for her forlorn blueprints in her folder.

“Wow,” Link had said, startling her misery, “did you draw that?”

She was snippy, surely, though her exact reply is foggy in memory.

“Did you forget your trousers?” he’d asked.

“Just tell the teacher I’m absent.”

Instead of a reply, Zelda hears rustling, before a pair of dark trousers are placed on her table, folded.

The boys’ uniform trousers.

“If I turn-” Zelda yelps, hysteria rising in her voice.

“Please don’t,” Link says, having the audacity to sound embarrassed, “I didn’t design anything anyhow.”

“But-” Zelda says, keeping her eyes fixed in front of her, “then what will you-”

“I was thinking a trade,” Link replies.

Zelda stares at the trousers, then her sketches.

“Deal.”

(They’re a sight to behold, 20 minutes late to class – Zelda’s trousers cinched to her waist with a phone cable as a makeshift belt. Link cooly announces that he forgot his pants, and insists the skirt is his ‘because it fits’. The teacher laughs and condemns them to be workshop partners.)

The fries are sorted and the sun is setting.

“I’m going to the contest,” Zelda says.

“I’ll be right there with you,” Link replies.

xo

The prayer at daybreak was for good fortune. At noon for wisdom and courage. At night for peace.

Time being the key variable here.

Zelda should have known her hasty 4 AM prayer out the window she was about to sneak out of wouldn’t have cut it. Or it might have, since her fall didn’t break her bones or wake her father.

Purah had enlisted her sister Impa as their photographer – an unenviable task to begin with; it was clear soon that the morning was still too dark for a clear shot.

Zelda nicks her shin thrice as the team lifts their huge creation for Robbie to slip the trolley underneath. He’s tinkering with a clamp right by her sneakers when she feels the smooth chrome underbelly slip from her sweaty grasp, only for Link to stretch and close the distance between their hands, steadying the load.

Her muscles are burning as she strains to keep their precious creation upright, her pulse so loud it thrums through the metal piping.

There is nothing between them. Link’s hands do not touch hers, but their shared weight remaining lifted is proof of presence. The machine’s copper veins are warm from their heat, restless in their tired arms like a Labrador puppy. Heavy and warm is the testimony of their silent love, connecting them.

It is too dark to document this moment, too dark even to witness it – Zelda is joyous. She is surrounded by friends and the fruits of labour. There is trust in how Robbie calmly fixes the machine to its clamps, vulnerable under its massive weight. Purah and Impa too, lived further from the school than the rest, and arrived early with sandwiches and juice packs.

Robbie slides out from under the machine and stands to help them lower it. They stare down at their competition entry in a circle – the mass of metal and undusted plastic shavings is a strange, beautiful asteroid before them.

Months of labour – of budgeting and salvaging junkyard parts. Months of singed fingers and failed tests.

“Let’s hit the road,” Robbie declares, unlocking the trolley wheels with a kick to the lever. He leads the procession, the trolley squeaking as it rolls. Purah heaves their lunch bag and in her other hand guides a sleepy Impa with her. Link falls in step, both shoulders strapped to heaving duffel bags of spare parts and tools.

Watching them trail out the school gates, greeting the rising sun, Zelda prays again.

They greet the welcoming committee at the convention centre who inform them coffee is available to anyone with a visitor pass. Link is enthralled with the scale of the space they enter, sweeping an awed gaze along the domed ceiling.

The rest of the team greets familiar faces as they move in, shaking their hands and promising to drop by when they were done with setting up. Finally, they reach their display booth and ignore the Yiga students across them.

Purah dramatically sets up their security system, an alarm-camera-taser hybrid she’d engineered after their last sabotage. She clicks the parts together noisily, making sure their competitors knew she was ignoring them. Loudly.

Zelda herself was not generous with grace. In the field of science, ego size often correlated directly to budget – it was a recurring truth that only elites denied, much like the illicit wealth of Yiga Institute.

Too many friends who made the unfortunate transition there have sent her screenshots, urging her to be cautious. Group chats with plans to decrypt competitor’s software or filch integral components, private social medias with derisive comments towards Zelda and her friends, their schools, the other competitors; not even the organizers were spared.

They were petulant children sorely begging for a spanking up in their ivory tower. Robbie shifts with a calculated step near her to block their view of their entry.

Too despicable to negotiate with and too pernicious to ignore – their antagonism was personal. Robbie notices her rattling a loose connection and hands her a dog bone wrench wordlessly. The grip is spraypainted jet black, obscuring the “Cherry” brand engraving.

His ex-girlfriend of the same name is behind them.

They stand aside when they complete their set-up, watching Purah circle the table, unfolding panels of barbeque grills she had hinged together. They formed a short chain-link fence around their entry, barely an inch taller. Purah secures them first with plastic zip-ties, before reinforcing the gap by twisting in conductive wire.

“Link finished a cup of bubble tea as tall as that fence once,” Zelda remarks. The image shakes a disbelieving snort out of Robbie’s gloomy silence.

“Where is that madman anyway?” Robbie asked, looking around.

“Off to get coffee for us, I think,” Zelda says, watching Purah lower a panel to cage their entry in.

“Not quite,” comes a voice behind them, deep and quiet like whispered thunder.

Anger strikes like lightning and flows with a fatal current, her heart fibrillating to the flickers of a failing bulb. Zelda turns to see Commander General Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, and beside him, her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend.

As she shakes her head in furious disbelief, their forms mix and muddle – an identical standing posture, features trained into flatness. Most of all, on their wrists are digital watches so plain that adjectives beyond ‘black’ and ‘cheap’ fail.

Military-issued uniforms.

xo

Link holds the taxi door open for her father and her, and she makes a point to glare at him as he closes it and seats himself by the driver.

Her father must have prayed at noon – he had the good sense not to drive a tank to the convention centre at least. It was enough mortifying attention to be marched out the hall with a man built like a shelf, flanked by her undercover ex-beau.

They had barely reached the first red light when her father opened his mouth.

“Zelda, I’m very disappointed in you-”

Link sneaks a glance at the backseat through the rearview mirror and hurries to sneak the driver directions while he could still hear them.

“ ** _YOU_** are disappointed? In **_ME?_** ” Zelda seethes, nostrils flaring like volcanic vents.

“There’s **no need** to raise your voice, young lady,” Rhoam replies, keeping an even, commanding tone. Link has heard that tone flatten a room’s arguments like a hot knife to butter.

“You **_must_** have forgotten your afternoon prayers in your old age,” Zelda seethes. The driver pulls a face like he’s blowing a balloon at gunpoint and makes a right turn.

“Zelda Hyrule, you are being incredibly rude right now-”

“Will **_you_** lecture me on decorum?” Zelda shrills, “After you _dragged_ me from my responsibilities like a criminal?”

“You have **conducted** yourself as a criminal,” Rhoam stresses, his face gaining an unhealthy red colouring, “you were **well aware** that you were deserting your responsibilities at home—”

“Mother as my witness—!”

“ **Watch your language!** ” Rhoam explodes, “You will treat your mother’s name with the respect it deserves!”

“Short-cut,” The driver mouths silently, pointing to a small lane on their left. Link nods.

“Respect her name and not her legacy?” Zelda screams, “You **_DARE_** to **_suggest_** that Mother would have approved of your actions today?”

Rhoam sucks in a breath between bared teeth.

“You will do well,” Zelda growls, “to ask yourself if you’d answer the same way if Aunt Urbosa were in this car with us.”

Her accusing finger drills the dense wall of festering misery between them.

“I’ve **done** my praying, I’ve prayed for eleven years now,” Zelda declares, her voice reverberating in the small car, “I prayed to Mother for grace and temperance, I’ve prayed for wisdom to see my father as the man she wrote of in her journals,”

The pot boils over and boiling tears froth from her eyes.

“ _’August 1980; He is so gentle,’”_ Zelda recites, clear as a siren in the night, “’ _Rhoam noticed my favourite handkerchief tore from my carelessness—’_ , **look at me when I am speaking to you-** _“—this morning I woke and found it patched by my bed; it is early morning and already my heart is full of love—_ ””

She watches her father go quiet.

“Where was this man when I came home to my models broken in the trash? “ _Valentines’ Day, 1992; Urbosa is furious with Rhoam for letting me go horseback riding even though the roads had not thawed. It hurt to laugh with bruised ribs – Rhoam would never stop me from a thing that brought me joy, he is much too—”_

Zelda gasps for air, heaving and trying to form with words with quavering lips.

“Where was this man when I was young and afraid? Where was this man when I enrolled in City Town? When I joined this club? How far and lost is he, that you’ve resorted to sending your men to spy on me?”

The taxi slows to a stop outside their front gate. Rhoam looks down a moment more in silence. In mute disdain, Zelda watches as he feigns checking the time on his watch before he shifts to open the door on his side.

“Officer Link, please escort my daughter to her room,”

“Yes, sir,” he replies, paying the driver and waving off the change. He steps out the taxi.

Zelda promptly locks her door.

“We’re over,” she states simply through a crack in the window to a shocked Link. She turns to the driver.

“City Town High, I’ll pay double.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the driver replies, stepping on the gas before either soldier outside moves. She rolls up the window and folds her arms across her chest.

“An officer,” she sneers, “that’s all?”

They drive a distance in silence, the city a blur of building entrances and shopfronts, grey and brown in late November.

“Thank you,” Zelda whispers when the driver hands her a box of tissues at a red light, “thank you, really.”

xo

“Officer Link,”

“Sir,”

“I don’t recall my instructions enclosing orders to date my daughter.”

Link turns to face the Commander with a salute.

“Sir, instructions have been carried out strictly to specifications, sir.”

“Noted, Officer.” Rhoam sighs, resting a hand on the sobbing boy’s trembling shoulder, “At ease. We best go in and re-strategize.”

“Sir,” Link replies miserably.

xo

Zelda makes it back with time to spare before judging, barreling into the convention hall at half-past noon. She spots a camera crew three aisles down, following the judges.

She runs into Purah’s open arms and Robbie just about collapses onto them. Sandwiched between her friends, Zelda hears a small click behind her.

“Impa,” Zelda smiles, “hard at work, I see.”

Impa doesn’t return her smile; nods and looks away, forlorn. Struggling in Purah’s hug, Zelda turns to track Impa’s gaze.

On the table where their invention stood protected was rubble of destruction – the collapsed security system stacked like a fallen tower of cards.

“She must have gotten the idea from me,” Robbie murmurs, holding up their security camera, spraypainted black. The rest of the system could be dismantled with some patience and pliers; an alarm wouldn’t faze a team of seasoned thieves either.

“We don’t have a scrap of proof,” Purah says, “except for Impa’s photos before lunch that prove it was alright before we left to register together.”

Impa stands aside, clicking through her camera’s photo album in silence. Over her shoulder Zelda sees footage from their tests in school, their robot traversing thick weeds with ease, leaving behind cleared ground. The next few photos are of air quality results, proving that their creation could incinerate old crops without any pollution.

Photos of their juniors tending to the cleared ground - testing the soil for nutrients and acidity, their little garden started on a whim.

Impa pauses on a photo that is dark, save for abstract, warm shapes. Zelda takes a step closer and Impa zooms in on it for her.

It’s them, from that morning.

“I like this one a lot,” Impa says, shy and proud at once, “big sister made me the low-light lens.”

The image gradually translates into forms – Zelda finds her blonde hair first, the brightest spot in the photo. Through the lens her pale skin is burnished a smooth, earthy red. In her hands is their invention, coppery and matte in the dark. All that is visible of Robbie are his thin fingers emerging from the shadows.

Obscured by the machine and darkness was Link, gaze pointed where he must have thought Zelda was. His clear eyes are angled away, his expressive brows shielded by his hair. With only the tilt of his head and the suggestion of his relaxed lips, a warmth suffuses Zelda.

“I like it a lot too,” Zelda says, remembering the titanic weight of love. Even artificial love was warm. 

Zelda claps, startling her friends and every person in a five-meter radius.

“Time’s wasting,” she announces, “let’s get to it, shall we?”

Purah and Robbie share a glance.

“We’ve got an hour and a half at worst,” Zelda goes on, consulting her phone, “Robbie, situation update?”

“We’re screwed,” Robbie blinks, though he shuffles over to inspect the wreck with Zelda, “I see extensive damage near the vegetation feed, the continuous tracks have some dismantling-”

Purah lifts her security panels away and they both wince.

“Go on,” Zelda says, typing at her phone.

“ _Major_ wiring destruction,” Purah reports, “we’re going to need to replace them completely, it looks like a five year old gave it a haircut here.”

“How many wires do we need?”

“Uh, one, two-”

“Two 5m rolls of the 10AWG Red/Black wires, 2m of 22AWG Yellow/Pink twisted CAN cables but I could swing it with 1m” Robbie recites. A renewed strength is in his voice, and he unscrews a dented panel by the engine.

“We were smart to reinforce the engine. All connections secure, insulation looks good too,” He places the dented panel bump-side up on the floor.

Making eye contact with Cherry across the aisle, he stomps down, fixing the dent at once.

“Also electrical tape,” Robbie peaceably adds, reaching for his screwdriver, “enough to straighten the leaning tower of Pisa.”

Zelda finishes her typing and shows her finished text to their club members, calling for all hands on deck. Enthusiastic replies are already flowing in.

“They’re good kids,” Purah nods, picking the last of her failed security system off the table, “but it’s the weekend, and this convention centre is in the middle of no-where…”

Zelda pulls her into a hug.

“Mendeleev managed to survive tuberculosis,” she says.

“and he went on to create the periodic table,” Purah completes, before they pull apart and burst into laughter.

Impa smiles at the scene, raising her camera for a shot, only for Zelda to spin around abruptly.

“Impa, does your camera have wifi capabilities?” She asks, urgent.

“Y-yes, it’s-”

“Purah, that tripod from our security cam, is it any good?”

“Sure is,” she says, unscrewing the blackened camera.

“Alright, I have an idea.”

When they enter the convention hall an hour later, they’re greeted with concert-sized displays lining the walls, each with identical livestreams of Zelda.

“EMERGENCY REBUILD” – a banner across the lower screen reads, scrolling away to display a list of required materials. On the top right corner is a timer counting down from 37.

“Is this a timed competition?” Rhoam wonders, staring at the screens in consternation.

“No, sir,” Link replies, worry muddling his face. He couldn’t pass a geometry test if all they asked was to identify a triangle, but the mangled shape on the screen was definitely not what he’d seen that morning.

“I believe their entry was compromised.”

A black wheel rolls across the screen and Purah holds it up to the camera, revealing a half-used roll of electrical tape.

“Thank you Mabe Prepatory for your donation, you’re the best guys! We’re more than halfway through our emergency rebuild now – with—”

The camera pans to a piling box of beige rolls.

“—that much electrical tape used. We appreciate Every! Square! Inch! That you guys are donating to us, so please drop by booth T4H with anything you’ve got! Oh, Deya Convent here with some battery connectors! Girls, this is better than Christmas—”

“We best hurry then,” Rhoam says, looking down at Link white-knuckling a small floral bouquet.

“Sir,” Link nods, apprehensive.

Crowds part for Rhoam – even out of uniform his lumbering frame receives stares of awe. Currently, the attendees of the 26th Environment Innovation Competition are staring at his frozen form, five steps away from City Town’s booth.

“You go,” Rhoam urges, “before…the flowers die,”

Colour drains from Link as he nods.

A crowd is watching as he walks over, bouquet in hand and guilt clear on his face. Purah stares at him as he enters, though her live commentary continues.

“Zelda,” Link starts. Purah frantically gestures for Impa to turn the camera to him.

There’s a bated silence as she sets her soldering iron in its stand, primly removing her safety glasses before turning to meet Link’s gaze.

“Zelda, I know this might not be the time…”

“It’s perfect!” Zelda exclaims, and the gathering crowd gasp.

In a smooth motion, she pulls the bouquet from him and rips the ribbon and wrapping from it, before tossing it into a carton of twigs and leaf litter. Rhoam debates a tactical escape.

“You saved us! We really need to demonstrate that our interlocking feed can process bigger blooms without jamming,” Zelda cheers, “now,”

She presses a bottle of machine oil in Link’s now empty hands.

“Officers have to complete a mandatory vehicular repair module, yes?”

“Yes ma’am,” Link replies, stunned.

“Wonderful, we salvaged some old parts from the janitor,” Zelda says, pointing at a bucket of rancid smelling parts by Robbie, “step to it!”

“Our newest donation is some good old elbow grease! Let’s hear it for our team leader’s boyfriend, Link!” Purah announces.

Link chances a glance at Zelda, waiting for her angry correction, but she’s turned to her work.

“Alright, Mr. H for Horsepower too! Now we’re talking!” Purah continues, not once pausing to catch her breath, ‘we’re down to the last thirty minutes of our rebuild, our item list got greased up 20 minutes ago, but we’ve got electrical tape and by god we’ve got hope!”

Zelda walks over with a tray in her hands – acknowledging neither Link nor her father. Purah stands with a nod, allowing Zelda to take her place.

“We’re left with our incinerator. Mr. H here is flipping 90kg of metal like a Christmas turkey; let’s see what we’re working with! Robbie’s ripping the bandaid over here, so to speak—”

A grimace runs across the convention hall’s rapt audience.

“Coffee,” Robbie reports, running a finger across the damp machinery.

“Now _how_ did that get there?” Purah drawls, glaring across the aisle at the Yiga booth.

With a deep sigh, Robbie settles in front of the open cavity of their incinerator. Impa shifts the camera for a better view.

“When I give the signal, you tilt it all the way towards me, ok?” Robbie instructs. Rhoam nods solemnly and Robbie kneels low by the machine, head angled up to the machine.

Robbie gives a thumbs up.

There’s not much that can shock a war veteran – seeing a boy slurp coffee from the inside of a machine, though?

“I thought you were going to check for damage,” Rhoam says, shell-shocked as Robbie straightens and wipes his mouth to raucous applause.

“Nobody tell my doctor!” Robbie screams, whipping off his shirt and tying it about his head as a bandana.

“Caffeine mode, I repeat, we have achieved caffeine mode!”

“T-minus 20 minutes,” Zelda announces.

A hairdryer is shoved into Link’s hand and a torch into Rhoam’s. The heat and bright light swelter like his time deployed in the desert as a cadet.

Robbie dives into the machinery and pulls out a sopping bundle of wires. Like a furious concerto, his fingers dig into the mass, darting to test and replace connections.

“Keep drying that!” Robbie cries, leaving the panel with Link. He dips in again, and Zelda hands him his kit of screwdrivers.

“T-minus 15 minutes!” Purah announces.

Rhoam remembers his first field surgery – he caught mine shrapnel in his right kidney when one exploded; his partner caught them in his heart.

They dragged him crying from the field, and the surgeons just about tied him to the gurney, telling him they were out of local anesthetic before giving him a swig of rum and stuffing a rag in his mouth.

By his head the surgeon had his tools laid out on a tray, and as Rhoam faded in and out of consciousness, his last memory was of the surgeon holding a bloody scalpel between his teeth, tying his stitches before slicing the needle free with the scalpel.

“Next patient,” he’d ordered as Rhoam was carried out. The sun was still high.

“T-minus 5 minutes!” Purah yells.

Five wiring units are replaced in the incinerator, each secured in place like joints popping.

“Light,” Robbie instructed, and Rhoam moves nearer with the torch, the hellish stench of coffee and sweat overpowering.

The boy is so small the width of his shoulders fit in the narrow space. When Rhoam peers in he sees the wires tossing so feverishly they’re dancing.

Triumphant, Robbie emerges at last, a screwdriver in his mouth. A trail of tape is in his hands, and in a swift motion, he slices the excess off, and falls backwards.

“He’s down! Robbie is down!”

“I’ve got him,” Rhoam cries, dropping the torch and rushing for his prone form.

“Last ten minutes, we’re counting on you, leader!” Purah announces.

“Aurhejweuxislkdfj!” Robbie babbles, raising a fist in solidarity. Rhoam presses a cold bottle of water to his head.

Zelda hands Link the torch, and Link nods in understanding. Zelda certainly couldn’t match Robbie’s speed, but a quick assess of the situation told her only the external display was left. She traces the wiring to its external display.

It’s cracked.

“Open call for an LED display,” Purah immediately announces, “4 digit, hell, any digit-”

“Will this work?” Link asks.

In his outstretched hand is his ratty, cheap watch – one she’s sure had been with him long before herself.

She receives it, and tears it apart. It’s small digital display doesn’t quite fit their specification, but it’s hard not to cheer when it lights up.

“We’re done! We did it! We did it!” Purah cheers, as Zelda looks up at her, smiling. Link watches as Zelda calmly reassembles the cover.

He takes his place across her, and the crowd counts from three – their love defies gravity together.

xo

“We are survivors,” Purah begins, hoarse, “We are innovators. We are the scientists of City Town High!”

The crowd bursts into cheers, all their fellow scientists clapping save for a silent few that sat with arms folded.

“We will now present our entry, the Flamebreaker!” Purah announces, sweeping an arm to Robbie, who pulls away the heavy sheet over their triumphant invention. He staggers from the motion and Zelda holds him steady.

“What’s that? Shh! Do you hear that?” Purah asks, pressing an ear to the Flamebreaker, “I think…”

She trails off, eyes wide.

“I think our baby’s hungry!”

Robbie arrives with a box, emptying twigs, leaf litter and flowers on the table before the Flamebreaker. Bending low, he appears again with a pair of large, black boots in each hand, dropping them in the mess.

Link looks down at Rhoam’s socked feet.

“She got you too, huh?” Rhoam sighed, “As long as she’s happy.”

Link nods.

“Dinner time!” Purah yells, as she rushes to her team.

The crowd counts them down.

“3!”

“2!”

“1!”

They flip the switch.

Their Flamebreaker starts trekking forward, bravely approaching the daunting pile of fuel. Twigs and leaves fall into its jaws with a frightening shredding.

Then, an error message.

Shock bursts across the group’s faces, mirrored by the audience. Save for one. Zelda finds Cherry and the rest of the Yiga trash smiling. In her thieving hand is the electric combustion that starts the fire in the incinerator.

“I know what’s the problem,” Zelda growls, snatching the microphone from Purah, “I think we’re not loud enough! When I ask what time it is you say?”

She points the microphone right at Cherry.

“DINNER TIME!”

Zelda hands the microphone to Purah, nodding. Purah takes her cue, shouting again.

“WHAT TIME IS IT?”

Zelda pulls a swiss army knife out her pocket and unscrews the incinerator with the Phillips attachment.

“DINNER TIME”

Two things happen. Zelda undoes her pony tail, and pulls her necklace up and off.

“WHAT TIME IS IT?”

She withdraws the blade from its ugly, black, military-grade casing. She throws her head forwards, tossing her long hair over her face like a veil. With a practiced ease, she moves—

And straightens with a bob, and fistful of hair.

“WHAT TIME IS IT?” Zelda screams, tossing her hair in the incinerator, and striking her blade across her magnesium flint pendant.

“DINNER TIME! DINNER TIME! DINNER TIME!” the crowd cheers, as the Flamebreaker purrs alive, conquering the organic matter before it. Robbie hurries to lid the spurting flames, and Zelda tightens each screw with the blade of her knife.

“I gave her that necklace when she was eight,” Rhoam chokes, voice full of emotion, “she knows how to start a fire with a bow drill too,”

“That’s amazing,” Link replies, holding back tears.

The Firebreaker engulfs their boots with an appetite.

“That’s the vintage model field knife, isn’t it, sir?” Link asks, watching the Firebreaker finish its meal successfully.

Rhoam claps and nods, overcome with pride.

“The one nicknamed The Daughter?” Link asks, his voice cracking.

“Don’t start, Officer,” Rhoam orders, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Yes sir,” Link sobs, turning to watch as the trio link hands and bow on stage.

xo

"Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Zelda announces, out in the parking lot. In her hand is a silver trophy, light as an empty can of soda.

“I can,” Robbie spits, “we deserved that gold, not Yiga.”

Zelda nods, but raises a hand in peace.

“Just the battle, not the war,” she affirms, “Next time round we’ll have eyes on our entry full time, won’t we?”

Link and Rhoam nod at once.

“Alright, Impa, as we discussed.”

Impa nods, and the team convene behind the Flamebreaker, still puttering away. Impa sets up her tripod and squints through the view finder.

She makes a petting gesture, before looking up again, dismayed.

“Father, you best just sit,” Zelda whispers. Rhoam smiles, sheepish, and sits by his daughter. She leans in, hand on his shoulder.

Impa raises a thumb and runs to her sister’s side as the camera blinks.

“Smile like they approved our budget!” Purah yells, and the camera goes off.

With proof of moderate success documented for bureaucracy, Zelda ceremoniously lay the trophy by the Flamebreaker’s mouth. The group clap as the cheap token is devoured, ignoring the concerned stares of leaving attendees.

“My turn,” Purah says, placing the spraypainted head of her camera as an offering, “here’s to failed attempts.”

“Me too,” Robbie says, bending and placing a spray painted wrench by the camera, “that’s to past regrets,”

Rhoam watches a moment, before unbuckling his watch, and placing it with the other offerings.

“Father,” Zelda protests as Rhoam removes his socks for good measure and walks, barefoot to his daughter’s side.

“Your mother always hated that watch,” he replies, “she’s cheering in heaven, I know she is.”

Zelda smiles up at him.

Link flusters for a moment, before Rhoam calls him over.

“Keep your pants on, boy, you’ve given all you got to the beast, save the shirt off your back,”

Zelda holds out her hand.

It is night – the moon is high and their Firebreaker eats its fill. Zelda’s hands are clasped, left in her father’s and right in Link’s.

Her night prayers answered.


End file.
